Bringing clean, safe, affordable cooking energy to Kenyan households: an agenda for action
This briefing note synthesizes the latest evidence on the impacts of traditional biomass cooking and discusses options for addressing these challenges, with recommendations for policy-makers in Kenya and across sub-Saharan Africa. In Kenya, 76% of the population relies on traditional biomass for cooking, with serious implications for public health (including an estimated 15,000 deaths linked to indoor air pollution), as well as the environment, women’s well-being and economic opportunities, and economic development. Kenya is already a leader within sub-Saharan Africa in developing and distributing clean cookstoves, but in order to achieve large-scale market transformation, it needs to play a larger role in supporting private-sector actors to reach scale, by removing market barriers to commercial cookstove initiatives, tapping local innovation, and facilitating access to end-user finance.